The first one's eyes
were beginning to glaze, the pipe had fallen from his hand, and he was
staring in front of him, and clutching some sheets of paper with
Chinese writing on them in one hand, a ghastly smile of extraordinary
bliss on his poor thin face. He was "happy and dreamin'," the detective
told us. I do wonder what about, don't you, Mamma? The next had just
begun to smoke, and was angry at our entrance because we let in some
air! The detectives made him give us the pipe to smell, and we watched
the way it was smoked, the man looking sullen and fierce and resentful,
crouching like a beast ready to spring. So Valerie's brother and Gaston
both thought it their duty to take care of me. The next man was half
asleep, also smoking, and the fourth what they call "quite sick." He
was the most dreadful of all, as he might have been a corpse except for
the rising and falling of his chest. The Mayor told us, with the most
amusing reflections upon this serious subject, that he would lie like
that for forty-eight hours and then wake. A fearful looking creature
crouched by the stove, cooking some more dog, or preparing something
for the opium; and a glaring piece of scarlet cloth hung down from a
rail at the top.
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